As regular readers of my blog you will know that I am passionate about small businesses, and want to see the awful mortality rate of small businesses fall dramatically. That is why my company, WinWeb.com, have started a regular feature to help small businesses to increase their profile, and even improve their SEO.

WinWeb.com are running a weekly competition where you can pitch your small business idea or service, free of charge, on their Facebook page. Then, all you need to do is get your clients, customers, affiliates, friends and family (thanks to Cole, see comment 5 below) to vote for your pitch using the “like” button. The only catch is that it has to be 110 characters maximum, plus a URL for your business; making it easier for Tweeting!

Got more to say than the 110 characters will allow? Why not upload a video to You Tube, then add it to our Facebook page. WinWeb.com will then feature it on WinWeb TV, gaining your small business even more exposure.

The competition will run Wednesday to Wednesday, and the winning small business will be that which has accumulated the most votes throughout the week.

The prize? The winning small business will receive a professionally written blog post featured on the WinWeb.com Business Blog linking back to a URL of their choice, on any issue to do with their small business. This article can then be used to promote a new product, service or just to raise awareness of their brand. I will also feature the WinWeb.com Business of the Week on The SME Blog, gaining more valuable publicity for your business and extra links back to your website.

There is no catch, just free publicity for your small business, and some great written copy for the winning small business every week. All I ask is that you respect this offer, and don’t post any links to ‘dodgy’ websites, any such links will be promptly removed and the user reported to Facebook.

I look forward to reading your pitches, and learning more about your small businesses!

The WinWeb Facebook page can be found here, you really have got nothing to lose!

Many parents tending their children at home would love to do some work in their learned profession. Unfortunately our society makes it very hard for many parents to find work that suits their lifestyle, this represents “The Lost Workforce of the West.”

All that is about to change with hiremyparents.com – her you can register yourself as a parent looking for work and hiremyparents.com will help you to find work depending on your circumstances. While still in early stages, the network is growing fast and job offers seem to be poring in. As with all internet resources the more of us who join the better the network will perform.

WinWeb will certainly offer work on this great site.

Find out more @ hiremyparents.com

I was contacted today to promote the “inwards award” on my blog, I’m happy to do that so here it goes.

iawards are awards that will recognise and celebrate the best British achievements in science, technology and innovation.

They are the first awards of their kind to be backed by the British government, working in partnership with leading entrepreneur James Caan.

They will shine a light on new technologies and innovations, showing how they can translate into the innovative products and services that improve our daily lives. They will stimulate commercial interest, as well as helping to bridge the gap between business and the general public.

Have a look and see if you could apply, you never know, but hurry it closes on September 16th. – ST.

London, March 31st, 2009 – WinWeb, the leading small business software and service provider, partners with B2B data and business list supplier infoUK (an infoGROUP company, NASDAQ: IUSA) to give small businesses a leg up in today’s tight economy. The alliance will provide WinWeb customers access to 200 free sales leads and business list data from infoUK and in return, infoUK customers will be able to utilise WinWeb’s OnlineOffice™ for free.

“Whether businesses are looking to grow or increase efficiency, customers can be confident that the combination of WinWeb’s OnlineOffice and infoUK’s business list and B2B data services will be a great resource for them,” said Stefan Töpfer, CEO/Chairman of WinWeb.

“There is a natural connection between our customers and the support WinWeb provides in helping set up and run a small business,” said Richard Lloyd, General Manager of infoUK. “By partnering we hope to make the day-to-day logistics of running a small business easier for our customers, as well as providing them with the tools to find new customers and grow.”

WinWeb’s OnlineOffice™ provides small businesses with a comprehensive offering of integrated business and administrative tools, including accounting software, business planning resources, web hosting, business networking, and secure data storage.

About WinWeb

WinWeb was founded in 1994 by Stefan Töpfer and has become the leading provider of on-demand online software (SaaS) and real business services to the 1 to 10 people SOHO and Micro Business Market. Based on WinWeb’s OnlineOffice™, the Small Business Infrastructure provides hundreds of thousands entrepreneurs with a micro business eco-system. This enables the micro business owner to access professional services on a time-shared basis for ad-hoc projects, short-term or long-term demand, enhancing the businesses competitiveness and productivity, while keeping cost down and variable. This greatly enhances long-term survival of micro businesses.

WinWeb is privately owned and operates in all English speaking markets globally, with offices in Europe, North America and Australia.

About infoUK

infoUK (www.infoUK.com) provides the most in-depth and accurate B2B sales leads and business data in the UK today – all verified, available online and direct from infoUK’s B2B marketing database of more than 2.2 million businesses.

With headquarters in Manchester, infoUK’s in-house team of researchers make in excess of two million calls, every year, to get the latest information about businesses, including key contact names, company names and addresses, telephone numbers, website and email addresses.

At www.infoUK.com business customers can look-up businesses, download prospects just like their own best customers, and access the most up-to-date B2B sales leads and business data to create targeted direct mail marketing and telemarketing lists, easily be sorted by industry sector, size of business and geography, to acquire new customers, generate sales and secure more profitable business.

I will be on CNBC’s Power Lunch Europe TV Show on December 23rd, 2008 at 11:00 BST.

I will be talking – surprise, surprise – about small business, home business and micro business:

• How can banks, government and big business help small business?
• Why our capitalism will never be the same again?
• Why WinWeb started the Business’09 challenge?
• How OnlineOffice can help small business?
• Why you should start a small business now?
• Why you should start a small business, even if you have a job?

And of course much more. So don’t miss it – I’d love to hear from you after the show, with your comments. If you can’t see the show I will host it here on my blog too.

Should be fun, so come and have a look. — ST.

Leicester / London (UK), December 2, 2008 Viking Direct – part of Office Depot, a leading global provider of office products and services – together with WinWeb, the leading on-demand small business infrastructure provider, announced that they have entered into an exclusive strategic alliance to provide Viking Direct’s small business customers with access to WinWeb’s OnlineOffice™ product.Viking Direct has been granted exclusive rights by WinWeb to offer OnlineOffice™ in the office supplies sector in the UK.

WinWeb’s OnlineOffice™ provides small businesses with a comprehensive offering of integrated business and administrative tools, including accounting software, business planning resources, web hosting, business networking, and secure data storage.

“Micro businesses are one of the fastest growing segments of the European economy, and Office Depot is here to help these customers take care of their businesses -whatever their needs may be,” said Ann Davis, of Viking Direct UK.

“WinWeb is excited to provide Office Depot’s loyal small business customers with our small business software suite of innovative tools,” said Stefan Töpfer, CEO/Chairman of WinWeb. “Whether they are looking to grow their business or increase productivity in the workplace, they can be confident that the OnlineOffice product will help them every step of the way.”

Over 650,000 small business clients of Viking Direct have free access to WinWeb’s OnlineOffice, normally charged at £119 plus VAT. This represents an unparalleled commitment by any S&P 500 company to it’s micro and small business clients.

About Office Depot

Every day, Office Depot is Taking Care of Business for millions of customers around the globe. For the local corner store as well as Fortune 500 companies, Office Depot provides products and services to its customers through 1,705 worldwide retail stores, a dedicated sales force, top-rated catalogs and a $4.9 billion e-commerce operation. Office Depot has annual sales of approximately $15.1 billion, and employs about 49,000 associates around the world. The Company provides more office products and services to more customers in more countries than any other company, and currently sells to customers directly or through affiliates in 48 countries.

Office Depot’s common stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol ODP and is included in the S&P 500 Index. Additional press information can be found at:http://mediarelations.officedepot.com.

About WinWeb

WinWeb was founded in 1994 by Stefan Töpfer and has become the leading provider of on-demand online software (SaaS) and real business services to the 1 to 10 people SOHO and Micro Business Market. Based on WinWeb’s OnlineOffice, the Small Business Infrastructure has provided hundreds of thousands entrepreneurs with an micro business eco-system. This enables the micro business owner to access professional services on a time-shared basis for ad-hoc, projects, short-term or long-term demand, enhancing the businesses competitiveness and productivity, while keeping cost down and variable. This greatly enhances long-term survival of micro businesses.

WinWeb is privately owned and operates in all English speaking markets globally. With offices in Europe, North America and Australia.

As I mentioned in an earlier post about WinWeb and winweb security, we have been contacted by hundreds if not thousands of people with problems relating a service that calls itself ‘Winweb Security’. We have been trying to help people, even so they are not customers of ours, to rid themselves of this menace.

Some of these conversations have been very unpleasant to say the least. Winweb security has nothing what so ever to do with us, WinWeb. We provide software and business services online to start and run a small business. All our software is ‘online’, we do not upload programs onto your computer, nor do we scan your computer for viruses.

WinWeb SecureTec is a description of the security and business continuity benefits of OnlineOffice, our product. It is not to be confused with virus protection in the sense that we scan your computers. We only make sure that our clients data on our servers is a secure and virus free as possible. We do not extent this service outside our network. If you are looking for that I have mentioned programs in my previous post.

winwebsecurity.com is the website – unbelievably still online – which claims to scan your computer for viruses, it apparently is a counterfeit program and more and more information is becoming available. Please do not click on any links on this website, as you can not be sure if you are not infecting your computer.

We regard this activity as a breach of our trademark and have instructed our US lawyers accordingly. We will try and have this website shut down ASAP, but realize it could take some time. This will not stop the the circulation of the malware but it may help a little to shorten the life cycle.

Our 24/7 support staff is trying to help everyone that is contacting us, and they are doing a marvelous job. Please do not threaten or harass our support team, please understand they are trying to help you, while at the same time we have no obligation to do so. Obviously we have an interest to help, but I have to provide a secure and harassment free environment for my staff to work in. Believe me when I say, we understand you are upset.

You can look up the registration details for winwebsecurity.com and see clearly who has registered this domain. Do the same on winweb.com and you will see it is not the same.

Believe me when I say nobody is more upset than WinWeb right now, this is causing real and undeserved damage to our reputation. — ST.

We had the misfortune that there seems to be a computer virus/malware program affecting many Microsoft Windows operating systems, called winweb.exe. Obviously this has nothing to do with WinWeb, but never the less people call and email us about it, understandably angry and upset. We do not install software since all of our software and business services for small business are online only, we also have no product that scans your computer for viruses.

This problem became apparent sometime on Friday and has been growing ever since. I’m told that most antivirus products are up-to-date and can deal with this virus. Our support team has done some research and is issuing some free advise to this problem. If you are affected by this, please go to our website and press the ‘chat’ icon in the upper right hand corner. Our 24/7 live support team will share with you what we know about this problem and how to fix it. They will also update everyone once we hear about successful removals and other updates.

The most important piece of advice is to keep your antivirus software up-to-date. Here are a couple of free antivirus/malware scanners:

• http://free.avg.com/
• http://housecall.trendmicro.com

If you had this virus and know of a sure way to fix it, please let us know so that we can update everybody else. Thank you for that. — ST.

UPDATE 11/23 – 23:52 BST: Please also see here for more information on how to delete the problem.

I’m getting questions about AccountsOffice, following my earlier announcement of today.

The problem we see is that too many see us as an accounting software vendor, we are not. While we offer accounting software, still the only accredited online accounting software in the UK by the ICAEW, we are not only about accounting software.

We want to provide our Small Business Infrastructure, centered around our OnlineOffice product. It is our believe that small business needs more than just accounting software, or any other software for that matter, it needs a complete infrastructure, with software, 24/7 service, small business advice and collaboration, combined with world leading small business service solutions.

So we took the decision to offer only OnlineOffice, with AccountsOffice and CashBook becoming modules within OnlineOffice. This will show the power of integration to small business, yielding enormous benefits, which made us into the leader in this field.

It will help us all to focus better on WinWeb’s core business and goals. It is by no means an erosion of our pledge to keep our accounting software free of charge for single users. After the free 30 day trail period for OnlineOffice, any user can decline to pay for the full product, which will leave him/her with the fully functional accounting software (single user) and LiveNet, free of charge forever, no strings attached.

I hope that answers any questions, otherwise feel free to contact me or our 24/7 support. ST.

Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends announced on her blog that Sen. John Kerry, Chairman for the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, will hold an online chat on Thursday, August 2, 2007 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern time.

You can ask questions in advance on the web and listen to the chat here. What are you going to ask?